From this discussion. Using such templates especially checkuser, which is used SPI investigations, will mention the offending user. This can be potentially harmful, other templates include ones used for vandals. Replacing the template with {{no ping}} is a workaround but that does have a compromise over the regular wikilink (some user scripts like popups don't work etc). Lesser serious would be other reporting templates used in administrator noticeboards.

In any case, we are told mentions are used by simply adding the userpage link in our normal talk page posts so this behaviour isn't intentional. Is it possible to exclude mentions from triggering due to userpage links being from templates rather than the post altogether? Or just make these selected templates excluded be at minimum.